RDIF Tags for Not Yet Techies

RDIF tags stands for Radio Frequency Identification is a hot new technology among retail stores for controlling inventory costs and for reducing the costs of checking out customers. RDIF tags are specially coded cloth or plastic that send radio signals to receiving antennas that can be far away.

RDIF tags have been relatively expensive - several dollars apiece. Now their cost is around 20 cents each, making them cost effective for inventory of all but the cheapest items in stores, and their cost will continue to go down.

Once placed on every item in a store, it would take only a moment to count their inventory. It would greatly reduce checkout time because a receiver would detect every item in your cart right away, and easily add up the total prices. It would also obviously reduce shoplifting by detecting when anyone tries to walk out with a tagged item without paying for it.

That by itself could significantly lower costs to consumers. Wal-Mart has told its top 100 suppliers to deliver their products with RDIF tags by January 1, 2005.

Of course, these RDIF tags will generate a huge amount of additional information on consumer behavior. Although the items you bought would not be identifiable with you in particular if you pay by cash, and stores as well as credit card companies can already track all your purchases paid for by credit cards, it would enable anyone with the proper equipment (the government? independent marketing firms?) to discover everything you've bought just by going by your house.

The obvious answer to this is that if you're buying anything you don't want the government to know about (pornography or drugs for example), it probably won't come with RDIF tags anyway.

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